


Darling

by plasticdaisy



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Artists, Humanstuck, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV First Person, Past Child Abuse, Romance, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 16:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19794451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plasticdaisy/pseuds/plasticdaisy
Summary: When Dave decides on impulse to leave his life in Houston behind, he runs away to New York City to stay with his sister. To get him back on his feet, she sets him up as a receptionist at a tattoo parlor, where he's about eighty percent sure the head artist (who happens to also be his boss) hates his guts.He's wrong.





	Darling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KittyMotor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyMotor/gifts).



For someone who works at a tattoo parlor, I often get told I am a ‘surprisingly blank canvas’. Which, to be fair, is true. Of the four people who work at Ink Differently, I’m the only one without any tattoos, and despite having my ears pierced, it doesn’t even remotely compare to some of the body-mods I’ve seen. I don’t really fit in, but it doesn’t matter all that much – even if it’s an awkward conversation starter from those that a tattoo shop can consider ‘regulars’ in some capacity.

But that being said, I can safely say that my job as secretary was a pity hire.

I hopped on a plane to New York City on impulse. I couldn’t live in Houston anymore. I gathered whatever shit I could carry in my raggedy, JanSport backpack and _walked_ in ninety-degree weather to the Bush Intercontinental Airport, then waited for the next plane to JFK. The second I touched down, I called my sister and I’ve been living on her couch ever since.

Rose is a journalist. She works for fleeting startups and magazines, but her talent leaves her only unemployed for minutes before she is looped into a new project. She’s a sort of unintentional freelancer. Her wife, Kanaya, is one of the tattoo artists at Ink Differently – and that’s how I snagged a job there.

I spent most days curled on Rose’s sofa, adjusting to New York in the only way I knew how: watching the news until I couldn’t take it anymore, and then watching cartoons until I fell asleep or Rose dragged me to the dinner table to eat. Eventually, Kanaya, who did the scheduling for Ink, offered me the job because she – probably one of the most competent people I’ve ever met – could ‘use the help’.

So, yeah. Pity hire.

The other two artists at Ink are Sollux Captor and Karkat Vantas.

Kanaya has a room close to the front of the store, which a huge, thick window showing the waiting room how she works. She’s the most well-known artist at the parlor, so it’s not surprising that she has the best location. Her room is the biggest, too. She alternates between traditional style tattoos and a sort of hyper-realism that is almost unimaginable; mostly in flowers and gemstones. She charges a minimum of five hundred a tattoo, but considering she goes by the hour, they tend to fall upwards of two thousand for the bigger ones. Everyone says she undercharges. I wouldn’t know.

Sollux occupies the smallest room, in the far back of the store. It has no windows, and the walls are covered in paint that dulls under the bright, LED lights in all the ceilings. They shine under a blacklight – like his tattoos. He uses special ink that _glows_ under UV lights, and will tattoo anything he deems interesting enough to take on. He has a lot of flash. His prices are calculated through a computer algorithm he has installed on the desktop I use at the front. I type in the hours he worked on the tattoo, the size, and select a couple seemingly meaningless things from a dropdown – the colors he used and the subject matter. It then gives me a number that seems to have no correlation to anything I put in, and that’s how much he charges.

Karkat has a room directly behind the counter. He technically owns the parlor, but he wasn’t the founder. He inherited it from an older artist – his mentor – who owned and operated it for years. When they left the industry, he took the reins and brought in Kanaya and Sollux. He plays soft music that I can hear through the thin wall. He does detailed black-work, and he has the longest meetings with clients out of all three artists. He has spent hours in that room with people, walking them through how he can make their dreams a reality. He does a lot of long-term projects; sleeves that take four-hour sessions over the course of months, giant back-pieces, and the more experimental ‘narrative tattoos’, which carry a story through a number of clients. He told me he has always liked writing, but finds it draining, and telling a story through tattoos is an outlet that fills more than one need. His schedule is hard to make but is by far the most interesting. He charges on a sliding scale by budget.

I like Kanaya and Sollux well enough, but there’s something about Karkat that draws me in. It could be because he’s attractive – defined muscles, charmingly mussed hair, snakebites, sleeves of tattoos. It doesn’t help he wears a lot of tank tops, too. He also is just, well, generally a good guy to be around. Which sucks, because as far as I know, he hates my guts.

I get it. He has to pay me for something that Kanaya was already doing. He thinks I’m annoying. I take a lot of personal days and I don’t tell him why.

Tapping my pen on the desk, I yawn. I come two hours before everyone else to answer the phone for possible cancellations or last-minute inquiries, and to entertain anyone to happens to come early for an appointment or to browse flash.

Today is slow, though. It’s a quarter to one, which is typically when everyone else arrives. Leaning forward in my desk chair, I shake the mouse and wake up the computer. It opens to the schedule.

Karkat has a big meeting today – he’s seeing a client for the first time, and he’s blocked off from three onward. Sollux has five flash appointments, but one of them cancelled this morning. He gets a lot of walk-ins, though, and when he feels like it, he can buzz through up to twenty clients in one day. Kanaya has a four-hour session booked for a flower she’s been doing, and after that her time is blocked out because she is going out to dinner with Rose.

My phone vibrates across the desk, and I reach for it in a way that instantly felt too nonchalant. There’s a text from a long-distance friend of mine, John, in a group-chat with Rose and me. It’s a link to a news article, captioned underneath by Egbert with a preface that I will ‘need to sit down and hold my breath’. Rose has commented that I check it after work.

I tap the link, and feel the heat drain from my face as the news article consumes my screen, climbing from my phone and clawing at my chest. It’s about a ‘suspected gang crime’, in which a man was found dead in a Houston alley.

My brother.

There’s a blurred photograph, presumably from a security camera, of him – his face pixelated – laying against a wall. My head spins, and I can’t help but feel like the room is suddenly collapsing in on itself.

I can’t say I hate my brother, after everything he did – I’m not sure why. My hands ache as my thoughts do a lap behind my eyes, sprinting and gasping for air; Bro can’t be dead. Bro is … _invincible_. Dauntless. An impenetrable wall of stoicism and physical skill.

I’m standing, suddenly. When did I stand? I can’t think.

I’m not safe. He can’t die. He’s not dead. He faked it; he’s _coming_ –

Suddenly I’m ten years old, hiding under my desk and trying not to cry because I’m not allowed to cry, because I’m supposed to be strong – and Bro comes and drags me out from under the desk, forcing me up the stairs while I kick, breathless and gasping, and throwing me onto the roof. I look up and see him: massive, towering over me, his gaze challenging even behind his shades. He grows taller and taller, framed by the vermillion Houston sky and the red sun.

“– what’s going on? Hey –”

A familiar voice derails my speeding train of thought, and I open my eyes – _when had I closed them?_ — and beyond the throbbing in my head and the waves of panic coursing through my veins, poisoned with fear, I see Karkat kneeling in front of me.

I’m under my desk.

He reaches towards me and I flinch. Fuck, he’s going to fire me for this. I cringe and take a deep breath, awaiting a loud lecture about how I’ve taken three days off this week without giving a reason (panic attacks in Rose’s bathroom) and how I didn’t answer the phone last night even though it was an important client for Kanaya (Houston area code) and how I’m a mess on the floor under my desk right now instead of doing my goddamn job –

“Dave? Hey, hey, hey.”

His hand finds my cheek in a tender way, wiping away my tears. His voice – often proud and at a volume you can hear across the store – is soft and sweet. It still has that same tone, though: clear intent and a sort of warm roughness.

“What’s going on? Talk to me, please.”

He sounds _afraid_.

I push up my shades, rubbing my eyes. He moves his hand to my back. His touches are careful.

“My brother is dead,” I murmur.

“Oh, fuck,” Karkat’s response is a breath, “I’m so sorry.”

I laugh, bitterly.

“He was a fucking asshole,” my voice is hoarse, “but I … I don’t know.”

I look up at him – with my shades pushed up onto my head, my eyes exposed, I feel as if I am baring everything to him. Our gazes meet, and I realize how warm his eyes are; how he looks at me like he only wants to _help_. I don’t know why I haven’t noticed. Maybe I haven’t been looking close enough. I wonder how he feels when he looks into mine.

He cancels his appointment at three.

♞

“Dave, I need you to cancel my seven.”

I pull out an earbud, spinning around in my chair. Karkat is standing behind me, leaning against the doorframe to his room. His arms are crossed over his chest. He looks tired.

“Yeah, uh, sure. I’ll call her now. Is everything okay?”

He shrugs, turning around and disappearing. I massage the bridge of my nose and pick up the phone. The client is understanding – she reschedules for Karkat’s next available session. When I first had to make a last-minute cancellation for him, I expected to be berated, but Karkat has some of the most loyal clients; that’s what he gets for being so personable and kind to them.

I hang up the phone, standing and rolling my earbuds around my phone. I want to go check on Karkat.

He and I have gotten closer since I found out Bro had died; he’d spent that whole evening with me, and we just _talked_. I told him what I could about growing up, and about why I took so many days off without telling him. I told him why I moved to New York. He told me about what brought him to the city, about his family’s disapproval of his craft and life. He also told me about how hard it can be to run the shop, especially when he doesn’t have the energy to, and how fucking tired and overworked he can get, especially on a bad day.

So, we made a deal.

I’d tell Karkat what was going on when I called out, and ask for help if I needed it, especially at work. He’d let me take breaks, and he’d even move his schedule around on my worst days. In return, he’d tell me when he was feeling like shit, or when he felt overworked, or if he needed someone to talk to or pick up the reins for a while.

We’ve become pretty close, to say the least.

I knock on the doorframe. Karkat is sitting on his stool, a hand over his face.

“What’s going on, man?” I ask quietly, walking over to him.

“I don’t fucking know. I feel like shit,” his voice is breathy as he speaks – like he’s speaking through a sigh. I lean down a little, reaching towards him.

“Can I?”

He nods. I wrap my arms around him, pulling him into my arms. He nuzzles into my neck, pulling the back of my shirt into fists. I rub his back in calming circles, humming to him.

“What can I do?” I offer in a whisper.

He shrugs and shakes his head.

“Okay. That’s okay,” I run a hand through his hair, “but we should do something, okay. Do you want to go home? I can take you. Kanaya doesn’t have any more appointments today, it’s just Sollux having doing flash all night. I’ll ask her to cover me.”

He nods against my neck.

“I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t move.”

I quickly make my way to Kanaya’s room, ducking my head in. She’s drawing. I tell her I’m taking Karkat home, and she agrees to cover my shift. I grab Karkat’s things, rushing back into his room and wrapping an arm around him. We make our way out quietly, him leaning against me.

He usually walks to work. The walk back is quiet, save for a bit of my awkward rambling. It’s okay, though. Once we’re in his apartment, I put on a movie and he settles on his couch. He has fairy lights lining the walls; I flicked them on and turned the lights down. Once everything is set up, I order him takeout from a restaurant he likes – a ramen joint a few blocks down.

“Do you want me to stay?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says, “please.”

I nod, sitting next to him, opening my arms. He leans against me.

“Feeling any better?”

“A little.”

I can barely hear him over the movie; it’s one we’ve both seen before. I reach and turn it down. It has the subtitles on, anyway.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head.

“Do you want to talk about something else?”

“Okay.”

“Did you draw anything today?”

He nods.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

He tells me about the flash he’s been working on – it’s a sheet that juxtaposes flowers and bones. He knows so much about stuff like that; he has collections of animal bones and pressed flowers. He tells me about the flowers he picked and the meaning behind the combinations of animals, flowers, and parts of the body. The more he talks, the louder his voice gets, and the more he smiles. He still looks tired, but I’m glad he’s at least feeling a little better.

I love hearing him talk about his art.

Soon, the two of us are chatting and laughing. The ramen arrives. I get us both glasses of water; neither of us have had enough today. When the movie ends, Karkat puts on a playlist of songs he wanted to show me. He tells me he wants a haircut. I tell him I love how soft his hair is, and it’ll look good no matter what he does with it. I show him some of the photos I’ve taken in the past few days.

After a few hours, we’re back to talking about tattoos.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love that you work for me, but why did you stay?” he asks, putting down his glass of water and leaning back on the couch.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just you don’t really seem to … like tattoos all that much. At least, not enough to have any. To be honest, as much as I like having you around, I always feel like you’re going to leave. Like, that the shop is a waypoint for you.”

I shake my head.

“I love working for you, man. I don’t plan to go anywhere unless you fire me. It’s not that I don’t like tattoos – like, I love your work more than anything, and I wish I could get one from you, but …” I trail off and look down, picking at the nail-polish on my right pointer finger.

“If it’s money, you know I work with sliding prices, and you’re my friend –”

“No, no, it’s not that.”

I take a deep breath.

“I have an issue with, like, blood,” when I speak, my voice is quieter than I intend, like the noise is stolen from my throat by the discomfort lurking in my chest, “when I left Houston, I was fine with it, I think. But when I started, like … living here, I don’t know. I can’t deal with it. If I have a nose-bleed I lose my shit. Which is dumb, because, like, I pierced my own ears when I was like ten – and if anyone should be used to blood, it would be me,” I rub a thick scar on my hand, “but I just, like, _couldn’t_ get a tattoo right now. I don’t know. I think I’d lose my shit.”

“Don’t say it’s stupid, Dave. It’s not,” Karkat replies sternly, “I understand where you’re coming from, okay?”

I look up and meet his eyes.

“Okay.”

He pulls me into a hug. He’s so warm.

“Hey, Karkat?” I whisper.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“… I love you too, Dave,” he replies. I feel him shift a little. He kisses my forehead. It makes a sort of serenity rush over my buzzing chest. I close my eyes.

A couple more seconds of quiet pass, the soft music in the room dominating the space while we sit there, holding each other.

“So, does that make this a date?” I ask, a little calmer being held, leaning back a little and wiggling my eyebrows at him.

He shoves my shoulder.

“Fuck off,” he replies, but he’s laughing.

“Is that a yes?”

He rolls his eyes at me. There’s a smile on his face. It’s radiant.

“I’d hesitate to call this a date, but if you want to take me on a real one, I certainly wouldn’t be opposed.”

“It’s a deal.”

♞

“Babe, can you do an appointment at five today?” I lean into Karkat’s room, and he looks up from what he’s drawing.

We’ve been dating for a while now; almost a year and a half. Time flies. and though things can get hard sometimes – with both of us having bad days, with how we see ourselves – it’s like heaven. We even moved in together; or, well, I moved into Karkat’s apartment. We share the lease, now, though (unlike me living on Rose’s couch), and I started selling my photography and taking classes on the side in music.

We still get shit for being together all day from everyone else, even though it’s been so long. Probably because I had always been a ‘no homo kind of guy’ on the outside, and apparently it was glaringly obvious we were crushing hard on each other for a _while._ It’s weird how other people notice before you do.

“Yeah, I think so. For, like, a consultation?”

“Mhm,” I hum.

“Okay.”

I duck out, going back and sitting at my desk. I bite the edge of my pen, opening my laptop. Sometimes, when things are slow, I edit my photos while I work. Karkat will stand behind me, occasionally, telling me what he likes about them and resting his head on my shoulder.

The day crawls by on its hands and knees, and I know it’s because I’m planning a surprise. Karkat _does_ have an appointment at five, but … it’s me.

We both see counselors, and I’ve been trying to find a way to get a tattoo from Karkat without having a panic attack on his chair just from _knowing_ it’s bleeding. And, it took a while, but I think I’ve figured it out. I’m still not totally over the blood thing – but I’ve been working on calming myself down, and I know Karkat will work with me to minimize how much I see and feel.

Finally, five rolls by, and I lean against Karkat’s doorway, my arms crossed.

He’s getting his notebooks and pencils out, setting up his little ‘consultation corner’, which is full of soft pillows and blankets. We cuddle here, sometimes, but we both sit on his side, instead of one of us on the side chair he has for guests.

He looks up, and when he sees me, his face falls a little.

“Is there really a no-show?” he asks. He sounds disappointed.

“No, he’s coming.”

“Oh, he called? He’s going to be late?”

“He’s here already, babe. I … made the appointment.”

He pauses, his brow furrowing, and puts a hand on his hip.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I made the appointment, babe. It’s for me. That’s what I’ve been working on. I want to get a tattoo from you.”

He looks at me, face unchanging – but his eyes are processing. He searches my face, but I know I’m not fucking with him.

“Is this a joke,” he deadpans.

I take a few steps closer, pushing my shades up onto my head. I meet his eyes.

“No.”

He visibly takes a deep breath, and then a huge, wide smile appears on his face. It’s like watching the sun rise, golden over the sky. Even after all this time, seeing him smile is just like seeing it for the first time. It makes me fall more and more in love with him every day.

“Do you know what you want?” he sounds so excited. God, I’m so in love.

“Not really,” I shrug, “I just know I want it from you.”

He leads me to sit with him, and I curl up against him while he sketches for me. We talk about flowers, and we talk about symbols of our love, words we like and things we love about each other.

He finishes sketching, and I smile as I look down at the page. It’s the juxtaposition of a sunrise and a sunset, split in the middle with a field of sunflowers and apple trees. He shifts, pulling a box of colored pencils out from under the chair. I raise my eyebrows.

“I thought you didn’t like doing color.”

He looks at me.

“You’re too beautiful to not be seen in color, sunshine.”

I laugh, nudging him with my shoulder, and he kisses my cheek. I smile at him.

“I love you,” I confess, as strong as the first time, as deep as the time we’ve been in love.

He makes the first stroke of color on the page. Yellow.

“I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> titled after the song by christian leave


End file.
